Parlor Music

This Musician Picks And Grins With His Friends

March 31, 1991|By JOSEPH PRYWELLER Staff Writer

GLOUCESTER — Jim Owsley unlatched his guitar case - the one with the "Music Moves Me" sticker on it - took out his homemade instrument and joined his friends playing a sad mountain song in the middle of his sitting room.

"I saw her picture by my bed," they sang in unison, an old-time chorus of fiddles, banjos and twanging guitars lending a hand. "I bowed my head and cried again."

Bluegrass pickers play into the night at Owsley's house every Friday. The members of the informal band come from various backgrounds; on this night they included a shipyard worker, a research scientist, a retired real-estate developer, a clock maker, a teacher, a mechanic. The three-hour jamboree shifted from pure Kentucky bluegrass to country waltzes to two-steppin' dance-hall honky tonk.

"I fell in love with music all over again when I started coming here," said bass player Marion Reese of Newport News. "Jim's sort of the lightning rod that makes it all happen up. It's a family tradition each week."

Kentucky native Owsley has hosted the open-invitation, come-as-you-are music marathons each Friday since 1963. For years, they were held in his instrument-making and repair shop in Gloucester County.

He closed that store in 1988 to spend more time with his wife, Rachel, and to work on the gardens and vineyards of his six-acre homestead in White Marsh. The jam sessions moved to his home, to a studio connected to the garage.

"Only missed one week since 1963," said Owsley, who said his age is 78, even though his birth certificate says he's 76. "We had to go out of town on short notice. Couldn't find anybody to take over."

Owsley stood near a framed picture of Bill Monroe, the Kentuckian called "The Father of Bluegrass" for helping introduce the world to the curious blend of English folk tunes and Appalachian hillbilly music. He's Owsley's inspiration, the man whose music wafted through the coal-mining camps of eastern Kentucky where Owsley spent a troubled youth.

"It was the most terrible thing in the world, to lie on your belly and crawl in the dark and the cold into a mine," Owsley said. "At night, the miners would play bluegrass around a campfire and sing. I got out of the coal mines, but I never got out of bluegrass."

Across the room, three musicians crowded near the two silver microphone stands to sing a mournful ballad, "Walk Softly on This Hard Life."

"We've all been brought together by the music," said guitar player Mick Trunkes of Gloucester. "I'm from New York City, but that doesn't mean I can't play bluegrass. The music puts everyone under its spell."

RACHEL OWSLEY said she worries how many musicians will show up each week. Usually, there's room for their family members and friends to sit on metal chairs by the kitchenette and observe. But not always.

"Sometimes, we get standing-room only," she said, shaking her head. "It's so crowded that there's barely room to breathe."

Owsley keeps his finished instruments in the studio's back room. The musicians drift there during the jam sessions to discuss Owsley's work-in-progress and to buy strings and other accessories. Owsley keeps a display case filled with parts.

The craftsman retired from the Navy after 27 years, much of it as a supply clerk at Cheatham Annex in York County. Owsley had bought a Gibson guitar but didn't like the instrument's sharp point at the base of its neck. It poked him in the shoulder.

So he decided to make his own guitar in the Gibson style but with a more rounded neck. His friends started asking him to make guitars for them. It snowballed into Owsley Music Shop and a new career at age 51. It's the place where he said he hand-worked most of his hundreds of guitars, 58 mandolins, 14 banjos and six dobros.

"It's my feeling that a person must keep busy or die," said Owsley, his voice rising. "You've got to find things to keep you occupied."

Owsley is known as a reliable craftsman in Gloucester, where he settled after leaving the Navy. ("It reminded me of Kentucky," he said.)

"He's got his reputation," said fiddle player John Brockman of West Point. "He's got his respect."

Owsley works from scratch. He special-orders Alaskan Sitka spruce for the instrument tops. Spruce makes the sound resonate better than any other wood, Owsley said.

He saws and sands either mahogany, rosewood or maple to fit the rim and base of the instrument. He cuts vertical soundboards out of pine to go inside. He carves inlays out of ebony and shells to adorn the bridge and fingerboard. His trademark inlayed figure is a hand-carved miniature owl.

"That's because people think my last name is said `O-sley' " he said. "This way, people will remember that it's `Owl-sley.'" The usually serious craftsman let slip a grin.

He spends as much time working the land. His yard is lined with rows of potatoes and other vegetables, apple trees and grape vines clinging to wire fences. Each time he goes home to visit family in Kentucky, Owsley digs up a small spruce tree growing wild and replants it alongside his house.